Standardized Testing In Schools

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Everyone at one point in their school life will take a standardized test, but this does not mean they are a good thing for students or even teachers. Many state policies like No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Race To The Top (RTTT) have been pressuring schools to use these tests to measure a student learning, achievement gaps, and teacher and school quality. Some people think that these are valid uses of test scores, but this could not be more wrong. Experts agree that no test is accurate enough to serve as the sole or primary basis for any for an important educational decision. These tests can also lead to teachers rushing through lessons and cramming information in short amounts of time to prepare for these tests. This waste class time where kids can be learning new skills and things they can use outside of school. …show more content…
Researches at the Massachusetts institute of technology tracked over 1400 8th graders in the Boston public school system. They found that even though most of the class scores went up from the previous year, but that wasn't´t because the kids had an increase in their ¨fluid intelligence¨ but instead the teachers were increasing the students ¨Crystallized Intelligence¨. Crystallized intelligence is the ability to access information from long time memory. You should be able to tell if a test is working with how people are studying for it and how teachers are preparing you for it. This also leads to teachers rushing through units and lessons so they have enough time to fit everything in before testing, and it ends up taking up two to even three weeks of class time reviewing for the test instead of learning new things or taking more time on the lessons beforehand so students can have a better understanding of